The Slowing Down
by Kipper Snack
Summary: Sleep. That's all she wanted, really.


_**THE SLOWING DOWN**_

In which Rhyme does a lot of napping and feels rather worn out.

* * *

Ever since the Game ended, all Rhyme wanted to do was sleep.

The change was gradual, so nobody noticed at first. Of course it took them some time to see the way she dragged her heels when she ran, the way her shoulders slumped forward when she sat. The way her eyes were flat and dull, metal discs, without sparkle, interest. The way her smile was too wide. It wasn't Rhyme, or not the one they knew. This Rhyme was different, unnatural.

Now, Beat, he asked her what was wrong. She shrugged. "Just tired," she said, too brightly.

Neku noticed her slump, asked if she was getting enough sleep. "Not enough," she said, rubbing her eyes.

Fourteen hours was hardly enough, it seemed. Her waking hours were filled with an endless feeling of emptiness, of hollowness. Rhyme could only escape the dead feeling when her eyes were closed, her face was pressed into a pillow, and her brain was shutting off and on rhythmically, orderly. Cycling through the sections. She tried to stay asleep for as long as she could, but even her sleep was flat, barren, and dreamless. It was like dying, when she laid her head to rest. Like the wings of cold oblivion, pulling her into the blessedness of nothing. She didn't have to think, didn't have to feel, didn't have to pretend. Not when she was asleep.

Yes, sleep. That's all she wanted, really. She was so tired...

* * *

Beat was attacking a particularly nasty math problem when Rhyme shuffled through the door. She sat down and took her shoes off, one by one, placing them so that they were perfectly parallel to the doorjamb. Nothing wrong with taking the extra time. She was going nowhere, after all.

Beat had looked up at her and asked her something, but all she heard was the hiss of static in her ears.

"I'm going to take a nap," Rhyme announced, shambling up the stairs.

* * *

One day, the rest of the Bitos went out to dinner, a rare occasion. They were celebrating her brother, who had apparently been applying himself as of late. Rhyme hadn't even noticed. Even when they showed her, that he had raised his average by this much, she didn't care. It didn't really matter, did it? He was going nowhere, too. He had no dreams, either. No use applying himself. Rhyme didn't understand.

Those flat thoughts disturbed her, but she was so tired. She didn't want to go along, not this time, and she didn't feel good, no, she had a headache, she'd be all right by herself, she didn't like sushi anyway. She just wanted to take a nap.

They had looked at her strangely, but said nothing after that. They had left her alone, alone. Just like she'd asked them to.

Strangely, Rhyme didn't feel like sleeping just yet. She knew she'd wake up in the middle of the night, and be unable to sink back into her blissful oblivion until long past daybreak, no matter how much she wanted to. Her body wouldn't let her, that was all. So instead of crawling into her bed, she tried to find other things to occupy herself. She shuffled from room to room, pulling things out, putting things back. She ran her fingers over her photo in the hallway, knitting her brow. This girl was not her. This girl was bright, happy. She wanted things, she worked for things. She had a dream. She was not her.

She ghosted into her room, face expressionless. She reorganized the books on her shelf, by name, by color, by number of pages. When she got tired of that, she turned to the adage collection on her walls. She peeled them off, one by one, and laid them before her on the carpet. Slowly, with deliberation, Rhyme placed them in rows and columns until they were nice and neat. She then shuffled them around so they were in alphabetical order. She then picked up the first and read it aloud.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Her monotone was colorless, lifeless. Like a robot, or a corpse. Rhyme waited, staring at the slip of paper as if it would speak to her, stir something dead and cold in her heart. It did not, so curling her lip, she pinched the corners of the paper and pulled, until it finally tore in half from the strain. She placed the two halves delicately in the trash can, and moved on to the next.

"A closed mouth gathers no foot." That brought on nothing, either. Rhyme stared, and without a flicker of feeling, tore it in half. She threw it away.

"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." Nothing. No dull quiver of inspiration in her breast. Useless, these sayings. They meant nothing. She tore it, she threw it away.

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but once." Nothing. They were empty, useless, patterns of ink on a piece of paper. Empty. She tore.

"A fool and his money are soon parted." They didn't mean anything to her. Empty, hollow words. She tore.

"A friend in need is a friend indeed." Just meaningless, just empty. She tore.

"A friend to all is a friend to none." She tore.

She tore, and tore, and tore, and tore, and tore, and tore...

* * *

An hour later, Beat poked his head into her room to see how she was doing. He was a little shocked to see her, sitting calmly in a whirl of shredded paper, her adage collection scattered everywhere like flat, weightless snow. She was running her fingers through the scraps, her eyes flat, unfocused, unseeing. Like a robot. Like a corpse.

"Sis?" he said. "Rhyme?"

She didn't hear him; or, if she did, she made no sign.

* * *

Sometimes Rhyme would go to Miyashita Park, instead of school. She would turn away from her brother on the way to the bus stop, saying she'd forgotten something, her homework, her pencil; and she'd head in a homeward direction before doubling back and shuffling off toward the park. Once there, she'd nestle her red book bag in the bushes as a robin would an egg in a nest, and she would lay down on the grass, gently and gingerly, as if her skeleton would crumble into dust if she moved too fast. She would sigh and stretch her limbs, slowly, slowly, loving the kiss of the satiny blades on her skin. On those days, it was almost as if she could feel the earth below conforming to her shape, curling softly against her aching spine.

Everything was too fast, it seemed. Sometimes she didn't feel like she could keep up. Sometimes, she just didn't want to.

Rhyme would watch the clouds wander by, and listen to the hiss of leaves in the wind, and if she listened hard enough, she could listen to the people. Their conversations all blurred together in an endless river of noise, their movements like smears of color on an impressionist painting. People, people, people, swarming around like ants. After a while of watching and listening, they all joined together and became one seething, writhing conglomerate of motion and color and sound. Who said that Shibuya was alive? Rhyme smiled softly to herself. Shibuya was not alive, no, but it throbbed and pulsated all the same, as a carcass full of fly larvae does. People. Larvae. All waiting to grow wings and burst out of the folds of steaming decay they so loved to roll around in.

Sometimes, Rhyme wanted the world to just grind to a halt around her, to cease this senseless rotation. Everyone was moving too fast. That was the problem, she decided. The world would be so much simpler if people could be like her. Slow. All this running around, all this hustle and bustle...it was stupid. They weren't going anywhere. Nobody was going anywhere. The pressure to get into a good school, the pressure to get into a good college...why? Why did she have to? Why not slow down, why not cup her hands around her heart and feel it flutter gently like a butterfly's wing, why not empty the mind and simply fill her being with the ebb and flow of breathing? Why was there never time?

Rhyme hated to admit it, but she felt trapped everywhere else, as if life was a raging torrent and she was a sodden leaf being swept along in the tumble. Miyashita Park was one place that felt like the shore, a stone, a sanctuary, something to crawl onto and rest where the currents would not suck her away.

Rhyme's eyes fluttered closed, and she did what she privately liked to call 'slowing down:' first, she emptied her mind of all thought. (Thinking was too much work, anyway. She was so tired.) Once her head was as barren as the rest of her, she began to feel the knots inher back uncoil, and the tension slowly slid out of her back, down her arms, and back into the earth, the endless Earth. And then, she would focus on her breathing, feeling every fiber move and stretch as her ribcage swelled with air, and then exhaled it out. She focused on her heartbeat, its soft but steady rhythm never fluctuating. She tried to imagine the blood rushing through her vessels, and she tried to imagine that she could feel the oxygen seeping into her blood with each breath. And she would stop imagining, and just feel. She would just _be_, laying on the grass and under the sky, with the earth curling to fit her aching bones and all those bothersome thoughts draining away like water, like rain.

Why not? She wasn't going anywhere.

And in her opinion, if more people took the time to slow down, the world would be a much better place.

* * *

Under Shibuya, in another layer of the same world, a certain boy lay down on the flat marble tiles of his Room, scanning. Since he was underground, he could lie down and see the souls of the city spread out above him in all directions, like stars in the heavens.

Like stars, all shivering in a solar wind, quivering little points of lonely light.

Some quivered slower than others. Some flickered and flashed. Some were pulsars, some were supernovas. Some were bright, others dim. And one in particular looked very, very dim.

Joshua frowned and tilted his head to the side. But that particular soul was...well, it used to be bright as a flash bulb, a golden point of luminous thoughts; but now? It was comparable to a candle.

A candle dangerously close to snuffing out.

* * *

The effects of the gradual change were finally showing to Rhyme herself.

She regarded these changes with an eerie sort of calm indifference. If she was able to be interested in anything anymore, she would have thought to have a scientific interest in the aftereffects of the slowing down. The sounds of the city were too loud and gave her a headache. She didn't really want to eat anything, really. She didn't want to wake up. Her brother was too fast for her. Her friends were too fast for her. They buzzed around her aching head like flies. Larva, mayflies, the kind that rise from the water for twenty-four hours and then die.

Rhyme felt like a mayfly sometimes. What can be done in twenty-four hours? Can a life's work be completed? Can a dream be achieved? No way. A mayfly rises from the water, dreamless. A mayfly lives long enough to do nothing more than to produce more mayflies; it exists to exist, and create more meaningless existences. Rhyme felt like she was dying every time she eased into bed. Slower, slower.

How slow can you move, Rhyme? She challenged herself every day to move slower. She would take shorter steps, she would creak down the stairs like a skeleton, she would chew every bite of her breakfast one hundred times before swallowing. Slower! Slower, she would say, can you savor each bite on your tongue, feel the difference of texture between thirty-eight and thirty-nine chews?

It was a delightful game.

Friends, family, they buzzed around her and called her name. She ignored them. They were mayflies, they were meaningless. She was meaningless, but she was slow. She did not waste time running from here to there. It was an achingly painful process to move, to think, anyhow. It was all so stifling. She would rather be sleeping, she thought, as she waved goodbye to her mother, and her father, and her brother, as she left to go to school. Ha, school. She hadn't been in school for weeks.

Yes, sleep. That's all she wanted, really.

* * *

Beat, Neku, and Joshua happened to converge by chance at Hachiko. Neku wasn't too happy about the pale sewer creature being there, but there were other things on his mind.

Beat didn't care two ways about Joshua. In fact, he kept calling him Jesse. Honestly, he had other things to worry about.

Joshua was always pleased when he saw his Players, his Artists, and it made him sad to be called Jesse like his name wasn't even worth remembering. But there were more pressing matters.

"Something's wrong with Rhyme," they all said at roughly the same time. This was followed by an awkward, stiff silence.

Joshua took control, as usual. "Her Soul has been unusually...dim, as of late."

Neku nodded shortly. "She...she's not hanging out with us..."

"Yo, man, I know. I know. She ain't eatin', she ain't goin' to school..." Beat's shoulders slumped, his eyes clouded with despair. "An' her face, her face...'s wrong, man, just wrong..."

"What do you mean by wrong, Mr. Bito?" Joshua tipped his head curiously.

"Her eyes are all dead 'n stuff. An' you talk to her, and she doesn't listen, and this other crap I don't want to think about...it's not Rhyme," Beat says, and you could just about taste the anguish in his voice.

Neku folded his arms. "Wonder what's wrong..."

Nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew how to console Beat, and Beat didn't even know what to do with himself. He said he'd try to talk to her, even though he knew she wouldn't listen. The others nodded dully, even though they knew she wouldn't hear. They all acted like it was a step towards a solution, even though they all knew it wouldn't solve anything. What could they do, anyway? Neku didn't know her very well, Joshua had met the girl but once, and it felt terrible and wrong but...what could they do?

They went their separate ways.

* * *

Ever since the Game ended, all Rhyme wanted to do was sleep.

Rhyme waved goodbye to her mother and father (alien faces, she didn't know them anymore) with dead eyes and dead smile. She turned and plodded off down the street after her brother, gently easing one foot in front of the other.

"Oh," she said dully after a while, in a tone without inflection. Her words were thick and tasteless (they didn't mean anything, they were just noise) and sounded like they came from somewhere else, someone else. "Forgot my pencil."

Beat said something, or he might have started to cry (she forgot her pencil every day, but he had put six big packs in her book bag days ago) but Rhyme couldn't make herself care. She was so tired. She turned without preamble and shuffled off down the route to the park. She didn't even have to look; her feet knew the path on their own.

The sounds of Shibuya blended into a static hiss (noise, just noise) all around her. She shuffled slower, slower, slower. So tired...

She found her way to her spot in the grass. Already her bones ached in anticipation, but she forced herself slower, slower still, tucking her bag tenderly away under the bushes as if she were gentling an infant. So very tired...

Rhyme shuffled over (slower) to her spot, and lay down (slower) as carefully as she could. She took a deep, calm breath, smiled.

She slowed down.

And she stopped.

* * *

A/N: This is what happens if Rhyme loses her motivation; not her dreams, but the ability to have a driving force itself. Oops.

I was thinking about Rhyme the other day. Does anyone else think it's kind of creepy how Rhyme has absolutely no personality whatsoever? I mean, sure, she seems like a sweet girl, but think about it – that was when her memories were gone. She had absolutely no recollection of her past, no sense of self. She was probably just like Neku, except she had the sense to hide behind politeness until she figured out what the hell was going on. But that's still...kinda creepy, when you think about it. That behind her cheerful, forgiving smile...she's empty.

Granted, we know she's a selfless person – she pushed Beat out of the way – but then again, that could have just been a split second decision based on the fact that she had no dreams, and (she thought) Beat had a dream. Read "dream" as "reason for living." So all the while she felt she had nothing behind her, nothing ahead of her...it's a lot easier to sacrifice yourself with that mindset. So essentially – her personality is completely open to interpretation. There is the possibility of her death being a suicide, too, but that's wild guessing. Dun dun DAAAHH.

Guess what? Joshua is a giraffe that can fly. Joshua Giraffe, Joshua Giraffe, wasting away with no place to play...

...And when Joshua Giraffe gets scared, he sings this song:

"_Nothing can go wrong-o, I'm in the Congo!/Nothing can go wrong-o, I'm in the Congo!/Nothing can go wrong-o, I'm in the Congo!/Nothing can go wrong-o, I'm in the Congoooooooo_DRAGON KICK."


End file.
